ADRIATIC SCHOOL, EARLY 14TH CENTURY | Madonna and Child

F. Bensa;

His sale, Genoa, Villa Carrara, 5 May 1965, lot 167 (as Florentine Master, 13th century).

This panel belongs to a group of paintings blending Byzantine and Italian features which Edward Garrison, in his Index of Italian Duecento panels, attributed to a so-called 'Adriatic' school, deemed to have been active in Dalmatia in the early 14th century.

The present composition corresponds to a special variant of the Madonna lactans that occurs in another eleven panels, displaying Mary holding Christ in her right arm and a flower in her left hand. The source of inspiration in this case is Lorenzo Veneziano’s images of the Virgin of Humility. The motif of the scarf-like textile on Mary’s shoulders stems from the cluster of works associated with the Master of the Sterbini Diptych, considered to be a Greek master working in Venice.

We are grateful to Prof. Dr. Michele Bacci for his help in the cataloguing of this painting.